Proof: Louisiana Tangipahoa Parish Cougar Picture

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UPDATE: Apparently the cougar depicted in this picture has a match elsewhere on the internet! So it is a probable photoshop job. So unless getting the original picture with more detail can prove these are just two cougars in similiar poses then this one will unfortunately have to go in the trash as a fake.

I have been on the edge of my seat hoping and praying that the eastward march of the cougar would start to show signs of it becoming establish and permanent and not just an occasional male cougar turning up after making a long journey only to die alone and without breeding more cougars.

Well todays events are pretty exciting. As I write this some of the events are still yet to unfold. Things such as outside verification, finding the second photo, getting better images to display. Right now the copy of a copy of a copy thing hasn't obviously resulted in the best picture quality. But it is good enough at least for the moment.

First a little back ground. A guy I know told me (Oct. 2008) that his dad kept having something come into his front yard, every night setting off a motion detector that they use to let them know if someone is approaching their rural house. It was even coming up under the carport to mess with the garbage cans sometimes. Well he wanted to know what it was so he stayed up a few nights and got a look at a cougar in his yard.

So he put out his trail cam in his front yard. And I awaited the results with all my fingers and toes crossed. Well he got picture but not of a cougar like I had hoped. Just a bunch of stinking coyotes. I pretty much blew the cougar sighting off as a misidentification. He has seen the cougar a few times but I don't remember the particulars of the other previous sighting in the woods around his home.

Even though I know of a few cougars some confirmed and others I am not even allowed to talk about, this potential cougar didn't really seem to fit the mold of something that would pan out as one that would ever be proven. A big bucket of cold water was that it was on the East side of the Mississippi River couple that with the coyote picks and no cougar pics for over a month and well, lets just say I had very little hope of this one panning out.

But it did have one thing in its favor that originally had my hope up high. And that was that this area and the woods north of it all the way into SouthWest Mississippi, north as far as McComb, Mississippi has always been an area where there were lots of hunting clubs, a disproportionate number of hunting clubs, that gave very compelling testimony of numerous cougar sighting. Even stories that biologist had verified tracks from some of these deer leases.

But still after nothing turning up on my friends dads camera I pretty much gave up on this one. Well then fast forward to the end of December, 2008. My buddy says his dad has a next door neighbor who got not one but two pictures of cougars. I awaited him bringing me proof... again with fingers and toes crossed. Well weeks went buy and every once in a while I would ask if he had any picture for me. It was always no... not yet. Well this was getting old and I don't like pestering people so I kept the pressure to just the occasional question or comment.

Finally today (February 16) my buddy walks in with a piece of paper in his hand (not exactly how I wanted my copy deliverd). My buddy finally got around to scanning the image and printed it out. The picture shown here is what he gave me. I rescanned the image and saved it to disk. Despite all the conversion from camera to paper and back to computer the image although not crystal clear is still clear enough to be definative. COUGAR!

This is the first picture they got of the cougar. My friend informed me that the neighbor has a second picture. Here is the story behind the second picture. A dead hog was found in the woods. Since he knew a cougar was in the area he moved his camera over the carcass. He got one picture of get this TWO cougars. My friends mom is trying to relocate that picture after misplacing it somewhere.

Some people just don't understand all the whoopla over something like this. To them it is just another animal that they have known all their life, was out there but just in low numbers. That is just how they feel about it. Now I don't know if I will ever get my hands on the second picture, it might be lost forever, but I hope it turns back up.

I refer to my friend as friend or buddy because I don't want to give his name out and have everybody and their brother calling and harassing them over the picture. I don't even know their next door neighbor... yet! My next step is to get in touch with the man whos camera actually took the pictures and see how he feels about getting the LDWF's out to verify the picture and where it was taken like they did in NorthWest Louisiana this past fall.

That is what I have for now. Enjoy the picture and I hope to get the original scanned image file which should be a whole lot clearer than the current one.